Write Your Family’s Story
Post written by Sort Your Story Founder, Lorel Kapke
For those of us who are not professional writers but want to share family stories, let me share how easy this can be achieved!
Enter information in Sort Your Story
Enter information on family members in the Sort Your Story Software. Add photos and stories.
Create a photo booklet
It was a few weeks before Christmas 2007 and I was preparing for my first family reunion held in the summer of 2008. I sorted through my Sort Your Story Kapke photo file (1800 and early 1900s) and found a few photos of my fathers family, many without names or dates. I created three “simple” photo booklets from scanned photos. In these booklets I included as much information as possible and sent the photo booklets to my father for Christmas.
Interview family members
When I prepared to interview my father at our 2008 Reunion, he pulled out his set of photo booklets and spoke for over an hour! I never had to ask one question! Arriving home, I created many short family videos from “one” interview and updated those “simple” photo booklets to a self-published book our family can enjoy many years to come.
A few of these video’s can be found on my Sort Your Story YouTube and Vimeo page.
Two videos in particular are of my fathers WWII experiences. My project for this holiday season 2012 is to create a book of my fathers WWII experience; easy to complete as my fathers military photos and records are stored within my Sort Your Story photo and military folders.
Update Sort Your Story
The stories are available on my fathers Sort Your Story Profiler database. Organized all in one place!
Are you using Sort Your Story to record your family’s history? Have you created a photo booklet for your family members? If not, what’s stopping you? Organizing made easy, Sort Your Story.
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
5 Reasons Kids Should Use Sort Your Story
There are many great things about the Sort Your Story software and many adults are using it to organize their genealogical research. Did you know it is an excellent program for kids? Here are 10 reasons why your child should be using Sort Your Story.
- Easy to use. Kids can create a profile on themselves or an ancestor in just a few clicks. This is a great first step using software as a child enters the world of genealogy.
- It is colorful. Sort Your Story is very visually appealing. Lots of colorful icons are available for all record types.
- It is printable. Once a profile is created and records and information have been added, you can print the information and share it.
- It will keep you organized. Sort Your Story has a folder for every record type you need. Images can be stored in these folders for easy retrieval.
- You can use it for school. Sort Your Story allows you to write notes to accompany each record you enter for an individual. You can transcribe records or write a story. All of this information can be copied from Sort Your Story and pasted into a Word document to write a report for school.
What do you think? Are you ready to share Sort Your Story with your child?
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
Are You Thinking About the Feelings?
I had a discussion recently with someone researching his family history. He was talking about a family member that died and the fact that the very next day, World War I was declared by the United States. He wondered what the family feltat that time. Their son had just died and now the world was turned upside down by war. This also meant their surviving son might be called up for duty and in fact, he was.
When you enter your facts, documents, and pictures into Sort Your Story, are you also telling the stories that go with those individuals? Are you considering the feelings behind certain events? These feelings are what help us to bring our ancestors to life.
Our ancestors are more than just names, dates, and places. They lived a full life and dealt with similar things as we do today. Consider how they felt and write that part of their story too.
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
Follow Friday – August 17, 2012
Here are a few posts we enjoyed recently.
Midwestern Microhistory’s Is An Obituary an Original Source? Does It Matter?
MoSGA Messenger Texas State Library and Archives Online Collections
The In-Depth Genealogist – Check out their new State Resource pages. New states are being added weekly!
What blog posts have you enjoyed recently? Which ones gave you an AH-HA moment to aid your research? Please share in the comments below.
© 2012 Lorel Kapke, 19201 Sonoma Hwy. #341, Sonoma, CA 95476-5413
